Boring, Lifeless & A Befuddling Number Of Bathrooms

Stealing is bad, but the impish glee at pretending to steal can be very addictive.

Whether it’s in Skyrim with a bow and arrow, or the aptly named THIEF series, we love to skulk through the shadows, finding hidden trinkets. Little Thief promises to take a whimsical, robotic spin on the formula, with players stealing everything in sight as an adorable robot! With multiple gadgets and hundreds of unique items to find, it sounds like a whimsical stealthy immersive sim where you can approach from any angle.

So basically, Deus Ex by way of Ratchet & Clank? That would so be my jam. If only the game I experienced matched these lofty goals, this review would’ve been a joy to produce. Instead, it’s simultaneously so boring and befuddling that I’m not even upset. I’m just disappointed.

The first sign that things weren’t quite right was how starting the game immediately plopped me down in front of a house. Now, a tutorial is good, but the only real tutorial here is a piece of paper you can pick up. I guessed that this small level was for me to get to grips with everything. Then I’d move on to bigger and more exciting things!

Then my head glitched through a tree, temporarily making the most of when reality stops rendering until I pulled it back out. Knowing Bazooka Studio is a label for Japanese publisher MyDearest, the English translation is also rough at points. I never thought I’d play a game where a child proudly declares in text “It’s time to get off!” but here we are. Nevertheless, I pressed on.

Then things… things got weirder.

I discovered that moving too close to cabinets, desks, the floor, and drawers made reality move in the opposite direction, forcing me back. This is deeply unpleasant, and will induce temporary motion sickness in pretty much anyone. As I played, the owner of the house realized I was there and immediately called the local law enforcement, so I latched onto my escape drone pal and fled. With my ill-gotten goods, I was dropped off at a hideout, and able to buy a grabber tool.

The hideout lets you see all your ill-gotten goods, read up on flavor text about each object, and has a none too subtle “book” shelf advertising the publisher’s other games. Grabbing a book and pressing the trigger instantly takes you to the Quest store page for these games. But I digress.

The grabber tool is so necessary to being able to play without disorientation that I don’t understand why it’s an optional tool. Making one of the player’s arms be the grabber would simplify so many interactions. There’s only four other gadgets and four slots on your utility belt, so it’s all the more peculiar. The music-playing artificial flower gadget leads you right to wherever the bonus objective item is, making it also a necessity.

Then there’s the taser, which you also will always need. This means there’s really only one slot that’s optional, which will either hold a shark-shaped water gun that can knock items out of trees or a toy mallet for smashing glass and weak walls. At least they all function well – whatever I might say about the rest of the game, the gadgets themselves are well implemented.

Determined to see whatever came next, I proceeded over to the “start mission” door. Then I loaded right back to the first house, surprisingly. Perhaps I’d missed something. So I put together the mystery coin that you can find in two halves in the office. Nothing. Then I considered that every time I’d load in, I received a pop-up notice about a special bonus item, so I assumed maybe a bonus item is what’s necessary to progress. Or perhaps a certain threshold of earnings. Or perhaps some elusive, secret item to be found.

Well, I’ve gotten several bonus items. I solved the blacklight puzzle for the garage keypad. I learned how to not only steal the homeowner’s phone to keep him from dialing the cops, but how to steal his ring and tooth. Yes, that’s not a typo. I explored his house fully – which has a weird amount of bathrooms. I put in the grind to get the necessary payout to buy every gadget. I broke open the crack in the one wall, only to be greeted by a birthday cake and a creepily drawn smiley face.

I never could find the final puzzle piece to unlock the daughter’s treasure chest (like every puzzle, it randomizes each run) or locate anything worthy of the four jewel pillows in the player’s hideout, but otherwise, I did everything I could think of. I have collected almost half of the total possible items littering the house. That’s counting a wide array of useless ones, though some useless ones seem to have larger collision volumes, so removing them from your backpack can require rather intense thrusting.

I felt like I was slowly losing my mind because the advertising on Little Thief’s store page is specifically phrased like there are multiple houses. Except, far as I can tell, there aren’t? There solely seems to be the one. Modest scope isn’t a bad thing – but Little Thief’s humble abode doesn’t evolve as you play. Your knowledge of it will not make it more interesting to play around with. Rarely does the NPC homeowner even sit in a different chair.

Why not have him be in different rooms? Or randomize where items can be found? Something to add variety. A game like this either needs depth of quality or wealth of quantity. Little Thief offers neither. You just stun your pursuer, turning the experience into little more than the tedium of grocery shopping. Except when buying groceries, you get to eat things at the end. After you’ve unlocked the first five gadgets… there is no functional reason to keep playing except to build out your virtual hoard more. No upgrades, no new difficulty variables, no new modes – nothing.

It would at least help if the experience of stealing was thrilling or layered. However, the easily unlocked taser knocks out both the homeowner and cop so easily that there’s functionally no risk. Yes, there are other ways to temporarily slow your opponents, but the taser beats all options. Even the cop’s gun, but it only mildly irritates them – yes, really.

This isn’t the full extent of the strange design decisions made, but you get my point. Little Thief is boring and lifeless. Usually a bad game has some kind of core to identify – something that at least congeals together enough that you understand what the goal was.

Little Thief Review – Final Verdict

Little Thief is neither a kid-friendly immersive sim nor an enjoyably replayable arcade experience. It’s just being chased by a lethargic pursuer who is easily defeated with a taser as you repeat the same motions over and over. There is no tension, no pacing, no energy. It says something that I’d get excited when I find a puzzle, because that means there is a task besides swallowing up random junk.

They also never establish why exactly you’re robbing this modestly sized suburban house? You’re just taking the word of some kid (who you never meet directly) who supposedly built you. You aren’t a clever Robin Hood type, you’re a jerk trolling one guy who is functionally impotent against your pint-sized mayhem.

All you’d need is some gore, darker lighting, a little harrowing music, and this could be a reverse horror game. In fact, a lot of these design decisions would make more sense if it was. Instead, it’s a repetitious, contradictory, confused letdown. Little Thief’s premise should make for a great game, but it fumbles its execution, much like its virtual cop fumbles at keeping his trousers on.

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